Monday, February 25, 2008

(This is not a tale for the weak of stomach, nor for anyone who happens to be eating at the present time).

Everything happens to my side of the bed. Sippy cups left lying on their sides to drip a slow and steady wet spot into the mattress. Diapers seem to leak only when the child is playing on my side. Then there was the time Bethany shuffled into our room in the middle of the night complaining that her tongue hurt. I turned on the lamp and told her to open her mouth so I could examine her tongue. She opened wide and promptly threw up all over me and, yes, my side of the bed. So it really came as no surprise to me when the events of last night revolved around my half of the mattress.

The girls were playing together in the living room and Matthew and I were in our room talking and setting our alarm clocks. They has been playing out there for a while and we knew from past experience that eventually one of them would realize they hadn’t seen their parents in a while and come looking for us. So when we heard Harper call “Mommy?!” and the sound of little footsteps coming our direction, we thought we’d be funny and hide. We jumped into the bed and under the comforter and waited. We heard her come into the bathroom. “Where are you?” she asked, not seeing us at our sinks. We snickered loudly under the covers so she would be able to find us, and sure enough, she did. She laughed as she found our feet and patted down the comforter to find the rest of us. Still under the covers, we then learned the reason for her pursuit of us. “Mommy and Daddy, I went poo poo in my panties.”

We shot up like a couple of rockets to see our bare-butted two year old holding her panties in the air. “Harper,” I asked slowly. “Is the poo poo in there?”, pointing to the unfortunate pair of Curious George underwear. “Ya,” she replied. “I went poo poo in my panties.” I took the panties from her, handling them as I would an armed nuclear missile, and peered inside. There was evidence that poo poo had indeed been in these panties, but was there no longer. The situation had escalated.

We quickly moved into the living room, stepping lightly, and scanned the area. No poo poo. We didn’t know how long she had been walking around like that, or how much ground she had covered. All we knew was that somewhere in our home was an MIA piece of poop. While Matthew put Harper in the tub I continued to search the rooms but still found nothing. I rejoined Matthew in the master bathroom where Harper was playing happily in the tub.

“Did you find it?” Matthew asked, cringing hopefully.

“No!” I replied, throwing my hands up in disbelief. “Where could it be?” As possible answers to my own question flashed through my mind, I knew that we just had to find this poop. Remembering Harper had been at our bedside I grabbed the comforter and flipped it back. Intending to look under the covers, I was not expecting to see something launch off the comforter into the air and hit the floor with a thud.